(a) Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to automotive communication systems, and more particularly, to detecting misbehavior in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications.
(b) Background Art
For more than a decade, the United States Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been conducting research on Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications as a system for transmitting basic safety information between vehicles to facilitate warnings to drivers concerning impending crashes. V2V communications, or simply V2V, involves a dynamic wireless exchange of data between nearby vehicles offering the opportunity for significant safety improvements. V2V uses on-board dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) radio devices to transmit messages about a vehicle's speed, heading, brake status, and other information to other vehicles and receive the same messages from other vehicles. These messages, known as Basic Safety Messages (BSMs), can be derived using non-vehicle-based technologies such as global positioning system (GPS) to detect a location and speed of a vehicle, or using vehicle-based sensor data where the location and speed data is derived from the vehicle's on-board computer. The vehicle-based sensor data can be combined with other data, such as latitude, longitude, and angle, to produce a richer, more detailed situational awareness of the position of other vehicles. Accordingly, exchanging messages with other vehicles using V2V enables a vehicle to automatically sense the position of surrounding vehicles with 360-degree awareness as well as the potential hazard they present, calculate risk based on the position, speed, or trajectory of surrounding vehicles, issue driver advisories or warnings, and take pre-emptive actions to avoid and mitigate crashes. Government agencies and automobile manufacturers, alike, are working toward widespread adoption of V2V, such that each vehicle on the roadway (e.g., cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, etc.) is eventually able to communicate with other vehicles using V2V.
V2V technology opens the door to myriad benefits of an Intelligent Transportation System. However, with increased interconnectivity, there is greater risk of harm in the case of a security breach. In the event that an attacker is able to circumvent a basic level of security that is currently implemented in V2V systems, severe disruptions to traffic could be caused. For instance, an attacker may be capable of replicating another vehicle's authenticity certificate, e.g., by acquiring a DSRC radio from an old or damaged vehicle. In such a case, the attacker could emulate a vehicle on the roadway that is not actually present, potentially forcing other vehicles to automatically stop or swerve to avoid a perceived collision. Therefore, an additional layer of security is needed to prevent malicious attackers from breaching current V2V security measures and emulating virtual vehicles.